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Tunisia's president has sacked the prime minister and suspended parliament, after violent protests broke out across the country. Thousands of protesters had flooded onto the streets, angry at the government's mishandling of Covid-19.

President Kais Saied announced he would take charge of the country. The opposition denounced the move as a coup.

Huda Mzioudet is a researcher in Tunisian affairs at the University of Toronto in Canada. She told Newsday she was not surprised because 鈥渢his has been an open secret in Tunisia, with a lot of people talking about the possibility of President Saied staging a kind of constitutional coup. A lot of people seem to be extremely worried that what Saied has done might lead to some kind of dictatorship or coup similar to what happened in Egypt.鈥�

She said that others were happy to see this move because of the way the political class has been dealing with the economic situation and with Covid.

Photo: Thousands of Tunisians took part in protests (Getty Images)

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